Moskow Genociding Chechens?
lora...@cs.com
For educational purposes:
"LOCALS BELIEVE RUSSIAN MILITARY IS POISONING CHECHEN CHILDREN
By Andrei Smirnov Thursday, March 2, 2006
Chechen girls suffering mystery illness Last December 7, Taisa
Minkailova, a 13-year-old Chechen girl from the village of
Starogladkovskaya in the Shelkovskoy District of Northern Chechnya,
complained of health problems. She was gasping for air, experiencing
convulsions and headaches, and her limbs became numb. Her parents
brought her to a hospital in neighboring Dagestan, but local doctors
could not help the girl (Novaya gazeta, January 12).
On December 9 two more Chechen girls from the same village were taken
to a hospital in Grozny, the Chechen capital, with the same symptoms. A
week later 19 more children and three adults were admitted to the
Central Hospital of Shelkovskoy District. All of these patients were
females from three settlements: Kobi, Shelkozavodskaya, and
Shelkovskaya (Newsru.com, February 21). "All victims had the temporary
diagnosis of poisoning by an unknown toxin," Sultan Alimkhadzhiev,
chief of the Chechen Republican Children's Hospital, told the Strana.ru
news agency (kavkaz.strana.ru, December 20, 2005). Alimkhadzhiev said
that doctors did not know how the poison had entered the children's
bodies. They needed expert examination in Makhachkala, the capital of
Dagestan.
Despite Alimkhadzhiev's cautious statements, almost everyone in
Chechnya was convinced that the Russian military could be responsible
for the poisoning. Just two months earlier, several students from
Staroshedrinskaya, a village in Shelkovskoy District, had reported the
same symptoms. However, the authorities had managed to hush up the
incident (Novaya gazeta, January 16). According to the Kavkazcenter
rebel website, a group of unidentified Russians had come to the school
in Staroshedrinskaya after the first attacks and taken away a strange
item, forbidding school personnel from discussing their visit
(Kavkazcenter.com, December 19).
But the number of poisoned children in Shelkovskoy District was so huge
(at least 100 victims by the end of December, according to different
sources) that it was impossible to conceal. Popular anger became so
loud that Ramzan Kadyrov, acting prime minister and the leader of the
pro-Russian forces in Chechnya, had to appeal to General Alexander
Baranov, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, to send a
special delegation from the Russian Chemical Corporation to investigate
(lenta.ru, December 21, 2005). Captain S.N. Efimov, a senior specialist
doctor at a mobile military laboratory, headed the Commission of the
North Caucasus Military District that was incorporated into the Chechen
government's investigation.
On December 17, the Commission went to Shelkovskoy. Novaya gazeta
published Efimov's report from the trip, which said, "The examination
of the victims revealed the following pattern of the poisoning
progression. The source of the poisoning is located in the main
building of the school (because being in [the school] is the only thing
that this group of victims has in common) presumably on the second
floor. The poisoning may have been through breathing, but body contact
is also possible. The toxic substance was either liquid or solid
releasing toxic vapors." Efimov's report said that it was impossible to
determine the nature of the poisonous gas without special equipment and
chemicals (Novaya gazeta, January 12).
The first reports of mass poisoning had swept through Chechnya until
almost no one doubted that the victims had been really poisoned. The
only question was by whom. While the Chechens suspected Russian troops,
official propaganda pointed to international terrorism. On January 20,
the kavkaz.strana.ru website, known for its close ties with the Federal
Security Service (FSB) and the military, published an article that
said, "Between 1997 and 1999 there was a secret 'Al-Risal' camp in
Chechnya where instructors of Arabic origin used to work with poisons
and means of mass destruction. The camp was located in the center of
Grozny and it was sponsored with Islamist extremist funds linked to
Al-Qaeda" (kavkaz.strana.ru, December 20, 2005).
Blood samples from the poisoned girls were sent to the republican
Forensic Investigation Bureau in Makhachkala. On December 22, Bureau
experts told the press that "radioactive elements were found in the
blood of some children" (Agenstvo natsionalnikh novostei, December 22,
2005). One day later, the Bureau declared that the children had been
poisoned by ethylene glycol, the main ingredient in anti-freeze
(Kavkazsky uzel, December 23). The North Caucasus Military District
chemical laboratory made no comment.
Then, suddenly, all talk of poisoning disappeared. Elbrus Porsukov,
director of the Forensic Investigation Bureau, retracted his
colleagues' statement that radioactive elements had been found in the
children's blood. Musa Delsaev, head doctor of the Drug Control Service
in Chechnya, said that there had been no poisoning; the children had a
disease called "nervous exhaustion" (Kavkazky Uzel, December 23, 2005).
Zurab Kikalidze, deputy director of the notorious Serbsky Forensic
Psychiatry Institute, said that the cause of the disease was
"psycho-emotional tension" typical of residents of the Chechen Republic
(Kavkazky Uzel, December 23, 2005).
Although nobody in Chechnya actually believed this nonsense, the
parents of some sick children agreed to send them to a medical
institute in Stavropol for further treatment for this "nervous
disease." However, this "treatment" only worsened the attacks; now the
children's noses would bleed in addition to convulsions and choking
four or five times a day (newsru.com, February 21).
Today parents in Shelkovskoy do not let their children go to school and
insist that the buildings be decontaminated, but the officials, who
insist now that there was no poisoning, refuse. Chechen hospitals are
full of sick children and nobody knows how to treat them. Almost all
victims are female, either students or teachers, and Novaya gazeta
assumes that the source of the poisoning could be hidden in the girls'
lavatories (Novaya gazeta, January 16). The source of the poisoning
could be the item that the Russians took away from the school in the
village of Staroshedrinskaya last fall, as Kavkazcenter reported.
Clearly the Russian authorities are hiding the truth about the
poisoning. Their explanations that the children's convulsions were the
result of nervous exhaustion are patently absurd. "If the problem is
nerves then the whole population in Grozny and Vedeno district, areas
of the most intensive hostilities in Chechnya, should lie in
convulsions," says Khusein Nataev, head of the Shelkovskoy district
administration (Novye izvestiya, December 25).
The question is what the officials are hiding and the answer is the
deliberate poisoning of the Chechen young women by security officials.
The reason is also clear, but at the same time it is too shocking to
believe - the genocide of the Chechen nation. "